


Triangular Geometry

by Philosopher_King



Series: The Three-Body Problem [3]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: F/M, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Kissing, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Multi, North and South Comics (Avatar), Past Mai/Zuko (Avatar), Polyamory, Polyamory Negotiations, Smoke and Shadow Comics (Avatar), Zuko self-medicates, long conversations, sorry about that, sorry about that too
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-29
Updated: 2020-03-29
Packaged: 2021-02-28 23:42:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,878
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23385427
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Philosopher_King/pseuds/Philosopher_King
Summary: "Aang looked over at Katara, who nodded. He cleared his throat. 'About that...'"Zuko looked from one to the other, eyes narrowed in suspicion. 'What?'"'Um. About what happened last time I visited... I told Katara.'"Zuko blinked, then raised his eyebrow. 'Uh... which thing?'"'The thing where I... kissed you.' Aang's face felt very hot. [...]"'Well, I see she hasn’t killed you... or dumped you, I presume,' Zuko said cautiously."'No,' Katara confirmed."'So... we're all okay, then? Assuming it doesn’t happen again.'"'I'm not assuming that, actually,' said Katara."Zuko coughed; he hadn't entirely swallowed a mouthful of wine. 'I'm sorry?' he rasped, before he resumed coughing."
Relationships: Aang/Katara (Avatar), Aang/Katara/Zuko (Avatar), Aang/Zuko (Avatar), Katara/Zuko (Avatar)
Series: The Three-Body Problem [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1652515
Comments: 17
Kudos: 360





	Triangular Geometry

**Author's Note:**

> This won't make a great deal of sense without the previous two fics in the series, so do read those first. Takes place immediately after the climactic action scene in Part 3 of the "North and South" comics. I don't know exactly when anyone's birthday is supposed to be or what time of year it is, but I've decided Aang is 16, Katara is 18, and Zuko is not quite 20. Again, if anyone has a problem with the age gap, make use of the back button. There's still no sex, but there is kissing and discussions about more.
> 
> Sorry there's so much setup... I get kind of weird about logistics. (Probably one of many reasons I'm bad at writing plots: I'd spend half the time describing where all the trees are, Tolkien-style.)

“Well,” said Earth King Kuei, breaking the silence of overwhelmed relief. “That’s not exactly what I was expecting when I came for a conference about reconstructing the South Pole!” He turned toward Zuko for affirmation or reassurance. He was putting a brave face on his close brush with death, but his voice and his overly hearty smile still trembled.

Zuko gave him a warm smile in return that he probably hoped was reassuring. “If I’ve learned anything in the past—well, lifetime, it’s to expect the unexpected. Especially where the Avatar and his friends are concerned.”

Hakoda had recovered enough breath and composure to try resuming his duties of hospitality. “Your Majesties, allow me to show you back to your accommodations in town…”

“It’s all right, Dad, we’ll take them,” Katara cut in, a little sharply. “You and Malina should go home and rest.”

“Do you know where to go?” Malina asked. Her voice was shaking, too. Aang suspected that she was concentrating on practical matters to avoid thinking too hard about the fact that she had almost sacrificed her life for her lover’s.

“Since the Otter-Penguin’s Nest is the only decent inn in the city…” Sokka put in.

“The Otter-Penguin’s Nest. That’s adorable,” Toph remarked.

“And I’m staying there anyway,” said Aang.

“You are?” Hakoda said with a puzzled frown, clearly asking himself what else he had lost track of recently. “I thought you were staying with me and the kids.”

“I’m sure you could use some space.” Hakoda’s house—a far cry from the grand Chieftain’s palace that was planned—had only one spare room. Sokka and Katara had been sharing it before Aang arrived; Sokka had been planning to double up with his father once Aang got there, but Aang thought Hakoda and Malina would want to be together tonight.

“Where’s Bosco?” King Kuei asked fretfully. “Oh, I hope he hasn’t been too frightened…”

“He’s at the Town Hall, being looked after by the city guard,” Hakoda assured him. “I’m sure they’ve been supplying him with plenty of fish and pats.”

“We’ll take you there first, Your Majesty,” Katara promised.

“Toph, where have you been staying?” Aang wanted to know. Her editorial comment on the name of the inn suggested it wasn’t there.

“Oh, the Earthen Fire Refinery has rented a house for me and my metalbenders. A little Beifong Academy away from home.”

“Except I bet you’re missing your favorite motivation-bender!” Sokka said with the cheesiest of cheesy grins, which Toph of course could not see but could surely hear in his voice.

“Oh, I think I keep them sufficiently motivated,” said Toph, sounding vaguely threatening.

“ _I_ miss our motivation-bender,” Penga piped up, batting her eyes at Sokka, who didn’t look entirely thrilled by the source of his support.

“ _Don’t leave me alone with my dad and his new girlfriend_ ,” Sokka whispered into Toph’s ear.

“I can hear you, Sokka,” Hakoda said calmly from behind them.

“What, is Katara going with Aang and— _oh_.” Toph nudged Sokka with her elbow (“ _ow_ ,” he complained), which made Aang very uncomfortable, since he was pretty sure he knew what it was about. “Of course, we’d love to have our motivation-bender with us again. It’ll be like old times again, won’t it, lads?”

“Save that we have since found within us the wellspring of the power that eluded us…” the Dark One intoned.

“Yeah, yeah, except we actually know how to metalbend now,” Ho Tun translated.

Hakoda turned back to address the Earth King. “I apologize, Your Majesty—half the time I have no idea what my children and their friends are talking about,” he said in a confidential tone. “Is there any chance you could shed some light on this for us, Fire Lord Zuko?”

Zuko looked startled and a little flustered, but also a fair bit pleased to be singled out as the liaison between the adult leaders and the mysterious younger generation. “In this case, Head Chieftain, I’m as much in the dark as you are.”

Toph started snickering, then covered it with a very loud, very fake cough. Sokka patted her on the back, harder than was probably necessary (payback for the elbowing?).

“Sokka helped Toph’s students find the, er, wellspring of their metalbending ability, back when she first started the academy… two years ago now,” Aang explained.

“Somehow I don’t think that’s the only thing they’re talking about,” Hakoda said.

“Oh. Well. I’m not sure I can help with that,” said Aang. He pulled at his collar, which was starting to feel tight and a little itchy. Hakoda looked at him sidelong, too, then looked back toward Zuko, who shrugged with a _“Search me”_ expression. Aang hoped it was too dark for anyone to see how red his face probably was.

Toph, Sokka, and the students of the Beifong Metalbending Academy were the first members of the party to peel off and head in a different direction once they reached the gates of the town. After bidding everyone good night, Sokka winked at Aang and Katara. Hakoda shot them another puzzled look, eyes narrowed. Aang looked somewhere else, pretending not to notice.

Eventually Hakoda and Malina’s route home parted from the rest of the group headed toward the center of town. “Thank you again—for everything you have done for us,” Hakoda said, addressing Aang as well as the Earth King and the Fire Lord. He bowed to King Kuei, who bowed in return—not quite as low, but still an extraordinary show of respect, from one ruler to another. Hakoda started to bow to Zuko, but Zuko put up a hand to stop him and then extended it toward him, inviting Hakoda to clasp his forearm in the Water Tribe warriors’ gesture of greeting and farewell.

Finally, Hakoda extended his arm to Aang in the same gesture, and when Aang took it, Hakoda pulled him into a one-armed embrace. “You’ve saved all of our lives again—both of you. And my beautiful brave daughter.” He released Aang and folded Katara into his arms.

“I’m so glad you’re safe, Dad,” Katara whispered. “And you, too, Malina,” she added, looking over at the Northern woman, who was standing awkwardly behind Hakoda, eyes downcast.

“Thanks to you,” said Malina, and Katara went and gave her a hug, too. Aang’s heart swelled with pride: he knew how hard it had been for Katara to set aside the feeling that her father was somehow betraying her mother’s memory. But all her doubts about the earnestness of Malina’s feelings had been left behind in the canyon into which she had almost let herself fall.

The remainder of the party—just Kuei, Zuko, Katara, and Aang, now—continued toward the Town Hall. They found Bosco still in the Chieftain’s office. He bounded toward the door with an inquisitive “Rarr?” as he heard them coming, and as soon as he saw Kuei, he stood up on his hind legs and enveloped him in a hug.

“Yes, I’m here, I’m all right, and I’ve been so worried about you!”

“He’s been worried, too,” said one of the guards they had left to look after the bear. “He’s spent most of the past few hours looking out the window. He wouldn’t even be distracted by salted fish—and that’s my polar dog’s favorite!”

“Let’s go to the inn and go to bed, Bosco. The Otter-Penguin’s Nest, doesn’t that sound lovely and cozy?” Bosco nuzzled his friend’s hair and rumbled his agreement.

The inn wasn’t exactly one of the grand hotels of the Upper Ring of Ba Sing Se, but neither was it the kind of cramped, run-down waystation they’d encountered in humble towns in the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation (a shiver ran down Aang’s spine as he thought of Hama’s boarding-house). Everything looked and even smelled new: newly carved furniture, newly woven rugs and wall hangings, all in blue, white, and gray, ostentatiously sporting the traditional motifs of the Southern Water Tribe. Aang was uncomfortably reminded of his fan club in Yu Dao… but somewhat mollified by the thought that at least here, it was Southern Water Tribespeople themselves who were marketing the authentic experience of their culture.

Fortunately, whoever had made the reservations for the visiting royals had noted that the Earth King would be staying with a bear, so aside from some bemusement on the part of the hostess at the front desk (whose nametag helpfully identified her as Amka)—“But what _kind_ of bear? Just… a bear?”—there was no resistance to allowing the bear to accompany the king to his suite (their largest and finest, of course, which would surely seem small and quaint compared to the least favored guest room in his palace in Ba Sing Se).

“Agni, I need a drink,” Zuko groaned, once they had obtained the key to his (slightly less grand) suite and ascertained that a room was available for Aang and Katara.

“I would offer to make you a cup of tea, only I’m sure you could do it better than I could,” Katara said with a wry smile.

Zuko looked confused for a second before he laughed. “I don’t think that’s the kind of drink he meant,” Aang said dryly, recalling how much plum brandy Zuko had downed after the conclusion of the Kemurikage affair. _And at the start of quite a different affair…_

“Oh!” Katara flushed with embarrassment; recent events had only served to make her more self-conscious about what an uncultured backwater her home must appear to outsiders. “We don’t really drink much here, traditionally… but there’s a bar here at the inn, I think they must import things from the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom…”

“The bar is closed for the night—the mayor set a curfew after the attack at the festival,” Amka volunteered from behind the desk. “But I can have the kitchen send something to your room, Your… Your Lordship. Your Maj… Excellency?” She hadn’t quite figured out how to address Zuko.

“Thank you, that would be very much appreciated,” he said with sincere feeling, and the hostess looked even more flustered than she had by the presence of the bear.

Zuko turned back toward Aang and Katara. “Would you mind coming up to chat for a while?” he asked, sounding a bit plaintive. “I’d understand if you just want to go straight to bed,” he added hurriedly.

Aang and Katara exchanged a glance that communicated simultaneously _Well, isn’t that lucky?_ and _Is he okay?_ “No, of course, we’d love to stay and talk,” said Katara.

“Do you want anything? To drink, I mean,” he asked her. “Just tea for the Avatar—ginseng or ginger, if you have it,” he said, addressing Amka.

“Oh, I… I don’t really like the taste. Except for the sweeter wines,” said Katara, looking self-conscious again.

“Do you have any of the cloudy rice wine from the Fire Nation?” he asked Amka.

“I believe so, Your… my lord.”

“A bottle of that, then, and two cups. That’s the first alcoholic beverage I learned to like,” he said to Katara. “Azula and I used to steal it from the kitchen sometimes. We’d keep some hidden in our rooms and drink it before boring formal functions, or sneak off to pour some in our glasses of juice.” His smile of fond reminiscence definitely held a note of wry regret.

Aang and Katara exchanged another look, both doing the same math: _He was exiled at 13, and Azula is almost two years younger. They were sneaking alcohol at 12 and 10, or younger?_ Not that they needed any more evidence that the Fire Nation royals hadn’t had the healthiest home life…

The room allotted to the Fire Lord turned out to have a sitting room screened off from the bedroom, with a low couch and two small armchairs around a little round table, as well as fat cushions on the floor like those in Gran-Gran’s house (for those who preferred a more traditional Southern Water Tribe sitting experience). As soon as he’d shed the heavy collar and cloak with a sigh of “I hate that damned thing,” Zuko flopped dramatically into one of the armchairs, so Aang and Katara went for the couch.

“It’s great to see you both, though I wish it weren’t under such… chaotic circumstances,” Zuko said.

“Didn’t you just say that to me about a week ago?” Aang remarked.

“So I did. I feel like I say it every time I see you these days.”

“Such is the life of the Fire Lord and the Avatar,” Katara said dryly.

“You could just hop on Appa and fly over for a visit,” Zuko pointed out. “That is an advantage to having a sky bison.”

“And not being an actual head of state?” said Katara.

“I will! Just as soon as peace and balance manage to keep themselves for a couple of weeks consecutively…”

Zuko snorted. “Is that too much to ask of the world…?”

There was a knock at the door. “Come in,” Zuko called. He sat up from his loose-limbed slouch for the sake of respectability, though he was too comfortable to bother standing up. A maid walked in with a tray bearing a tall glass bottle, a teapot, and three earthenware cups. She saw who she was bringing them for and her mouth fell open.

“You can just set it on the table here,” Katara prompted, breaking her momentary stupor.

“Yes, of course. Your… Your Highness? My… Fire Lord? Not mine, of course, but… and Mr. Avatar, sir…”

“Just Aang is fine,” he said helpfully. “And Fire Lord Zuko.” The latter gave a cheerful wave.

After the star-struck maid had unloaded her tray and then backed out with it, bowing and stammering apologies, Aang turned and gave Zuko a disapproving look. “You could clear up people’s confusion about titles, you know.”

“I know. But I find it kind of funny.”

Aang frowned. “It’s not very nice for people of high station to take pleasure in making people of lower classes uncomfortable.”

“That’s not— I’m not—” Zuko spluttered, then stopped. “Ugh, you’re right, that’s totally what I’m doing,” he said, sounding disgusted. He clapped a hand over his face. “I’m still working on the whole ‘being a good person’ thing. It doesn’t come easily to all of us.”

Aang’s first impulse was to go put a reassuring hand on his shoulder, but Katara’s presence stopped him—in spite of what they intended to talk to him about.

Katara was the one to say gently: “Your family didn’t make it easy for you.”

“No, no they didn’t.” He pulled the stopper out of the bottle and poured something that looked like watered-down milk into two of the cups, leaned over and nudged one toward Katara, then took a long pull from the other. “Heh, tastes like some of the less horrible moments in my horrible childhood.”

Katara shot another concerned look at Aang, then took a cautious sip from her own cup. She raised her eyebrows in pleasant surprise. “Huh, I think I might actually like that.”

“We’ll make you into a sake connoisseur yet. Then you’ll have to come visit me…”

Aang looked over at Katara, who nodded. He cleared his throat. “About that…”

Zuko looked from one to the other, eyes narrowed in suspicion (or at least, one of them was). “What?”

“Um. About what happened last time I visited… I told Katara.”

Zuko blinked, then raised his eyebrow. “Uh… which thing?”

“The thing where I… kissed you.” Aang’s face felt very hot.

A younger version of Zuko would have yelled _“You what?!”_ in response to this confession, much as Katara had in response to the original confession, but this older, calmer Zuko just said “Ah,” then downed the rest of his cup of wine and poured himself more. Aang wondered how much of his youthful rage he had been trying to dampen that way.

“Well, I see she hasn’t killed you… or dumped you, I presume,” Zuko said cautiously.

“No,” Katara confirmed.

“So… we’re all okay, then? Assuming it doesn’t happen again.”

“I’m not assuming that, actually,” said Katara.

Zuko coughed; he hadn’t entirely swallowed a mouthful of wine. “I’m sorry?” he rasped, before he resumed coughing.

Aang took his teacup to the washroom, dumped the remaining tea into the sink, refilled it with water, brought it back, and handed it to his friend. “Thanks,” he said hoarsely before taking a sip.

“I told Aang it would be all right for him to… keep kissing you, or… whatever else happened, if he would allow me to do the same.”

“The same… with…?”

“With you.”

“Ah,” Zuko said again.

“But of course, whether such an arrangement will be possible is up to you.”

Zuko ran a hand over his face, pausing to rub at his eyes as if they itched; Aang suspected they didn’t. “Fire spirits,” he muttered, and took another drink of wine. “Should’ve gotten something stronger…”

Aang and Katara both waited silently for him to get his head around what was being proposed. Aang found himself holding his breath and slowly, carefully let it out.

Finally, Zuko looked at them squarely and drew in a breath to speak. “I’m… flattered,” he said slowly. “And I’m tempted.” His gaze alighted on Aang for a weighty moment, and Aang could feel a little flare of heat in his stomach, a tingle of electricity on his shoulder where Zuko’s hand had touched him—faint echoes of what he had felt when they kissed. Then the focus of his hawk-like eyes shifted to Katara, and Aang heard her take in a sudden breath, saw color rise in her cheeks, and wondered what she might be thinking of.

“But I have some concerns—and please, promise me you understand that nothing I say is meant to hurt or offend you.” Zuko waited for a reply, his anxious, searching gaze seemingly unable to determine whether he was predator or prey in this situation (and didn’t that describe Zuko in most of his life?).

“I understand,” said Katara, and Aang nodded his agreement.

Zuko paused to drink again—buying another moment, fortifying himself? “Put simply: my concern is that you might be suggesting this either because your relationship is very secure—or because it is insecure. If it is insecure, it might be that I am the threat, or the… point of conflict, and this is meant to… neutralize the threat, as it were; to find a compromise that might resolve the conflict. Or it might be that you find your relationship is… lacking something that you think I can supply.”

Aang opened his mouth to insist that the situation was neither of those, but Katara put a hand on his arm, a slight warning glare saying _Let him finish._

“The other possibility,” Zuko continued, “is that you’re proposing this because your relationship is so strong that not even jealousy can threaten it—so why should you deny yourselves something that you want, at least occasionally?”

Another pause, another fortifying drink. “I’m sure you can understand why the ‘insecure’ possibilities concern me. If jealousy is the problem, this will pour oil on that fire, not water. And if a spark is missing between the two of you, a third person could never provide that… certainly not in this way. I don’t want to see either of you hurt, and the very last thing I want is to be what comes between you.”

He fixed them again with that piercing, anxious stare, like a pygmy puma confronting an ostrich-horse and unsure which way it should run. “But… I have to protect myself, too. And if it is the last possibility—that your relationship is too strong to be threatened by jealousy—where does that leave me? I’d be… a diversion; a fifth wheel on a cart. Not really part of what you have, but just outside it, looking in. Probably—if I’m going to be completely honest—more dependent on you than either of you is on me.” Zuko looked down and away; he swirled the contents of his cup around and pretended to find them fascinating.

Aang couldn’t stand it anymore. He leaned forward and reached over to grasp his friend’s hand; Zuko just looked down at Aang’s hand on his for a moment before he looked back up at his face. “You could never be just a ‘diversion’ to us—to _me_ ,” Aang said firmly. “I meant what I said: I love you. Differently than I love Katara, but no less truly. You’re not a fifth wheel on our cart. We’re all… building blocks. And together Katara and I make… one kind of thing, and you and I make a different kind of thing, and you and Katara make… another different kind of thing. But… somehow all the things exist… at the same time?” He trailed off.

Zuko was staring at him, dumbfounded. With a hopeful grin Aang looked over to Katara for support and found her shaking her head with her face buried in her palm.

“I love you, too, Aang, but that is the worst analogy I have ever heard,” Zuko said.

“Spend enough time with Sokka and you’ll probably hear even worse,” Katara told him dryly. “But that one was definitely right up there—or down there—with the worst of them.”

Aang sighed. “Yeah, that didn’t quite go where I was hoping. But you get what I’m trying to say, right? You wouldn’t be an add-on to my relationship with Katara. We both have our own feelings for you, our own connections with you, and they’re independent of our connection with each other. And the three of us together are something different again. And different from what we all share with Toph and Sokka and Suki.”

“Both of us have feelings for you that sometimes might be best expressed physically,” Katara said, very careful and deliberate. “And it occurs to me that sharing such feelings with one person already isn’t a good reason why they shouldn’t also be shared with another.”

Now Aang turned to stare at her in wonderment. “What?” she said, self-conscious and irritable.

“It’s just… you sounded like an Air Nomad just then. I mean, that’s a very Air Nomad-like way to look at things.”

“Oh! Well… I suppose you must have rubbed off on me somewhat.”

Zuko coughed, and this time he hadn’t been attempting to drink anything.

Katara’s face reddened immediately. “Oh, you know what I meant! I meant, you must be having an influence on me. My way of thinking. Aang! Stop laughing, it’s not funny.”

“In the context of this conversation? You have to admit it’s kind of funny,” Zuko reasoned, while Aang bit down on his hand to try to control his giggling.

“You’re as bad as Sokka sometimes,” Katara complained.

“I have my moments. Seriously, though… on that topic… what _have_ you two actually done?”

Katara glared and took in a sharp breath, obviously preparing to say something like _“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,”_ but then she abruptly recalled that they had just kind of made it Zuko’s business.

Aang cleared his throat and attempted to compose himself. “We’re… taking things slow,” he admitted. “Just… hands, mostly. And kissing, of course. A lot of kissing. What about you?”

Katara looked very embarrassed at the turn the conversation had taken, but also, in spite of herself, interested to hear the answer.

“Mai and I did… all of it. I mean, nothing _really_ kinky. Though she could get _a little_ kinky…” A dreamy look came over his face, somehow simultaneously wistful and smug.

“Um… I’m not sure I know what that means,” Aang admitted.

“In this case, it means throwing knives very precisely to pin me to things by my clothes, then doing whatever she wanted while I was immobilized,” Zuko said matter-of-factly, then took a sip of his wine and looked amused over the rim of the cup while Aang’s jaw dropped and Katara wheezed with… some emotion. Shock? Delight? Envy? It was hard to say.

“Sorry, that was kind of beside the point,” said Zuko, not looking at all sorry. “I asked because I need to know what the boundaries are. I’m older than either of you, and I have more experience. That can be a good thing, sometimes… but everyone’s expectations have to be clear. For example—even if you’re willing to have a physical relationship with someone else, and you don’t think jealousy will be a problem—there might be some things that you want to do with each other first. You need to be on the same page about that, so that none of us end up overstepping someone’s unstated boundaries.”

Aang and Katara looked at each other, a little uncertainly. “We’ll talk about it, just the two of us,” Aang said, and Katara nodded. “Whether there’s anything we want to save for each other, at least at first.”

“Is that a yes, then? To the overall proposal?” Katara asked hesitantly.

“Not yet—I have one last concern, which is a fairly major one.” He paused to drink again, and Aang was fairly sure he was seeking the so-called ‘liquid courage’; Aang and Katara waited on tenterhooks. “You _think_ jealousy won’t be a problem. But do you _know?”_

Aang and Katara exchanged another look, thoughtful and a little apprehensive.

“There’s one way to be sure,” Zuko said, then waited.

“You want to… try something… now?” Katara ventured. “I wasn’t envisioning… all three of us _together_ …”

“What? No, that wasn’t what I had in mind. Just… a test.” He stood up, wavered a little, put out a hand to regain his balance. Aang wasn’t sure if that was just tiredness after the evening’s crisis, or if he’d been drinking too much too fast. It passed quickly, whatever it was; the few steps he took to where Aang was sitting were straight and steady. He made a beckoning gesture, and Aang stood up, too. He had a feeling he knew what was coming, and his stomach thrummed with nervous anticipation.

Zuko put a hand behind Aang’s neck. It was warm and dry, as Zuko’s hands always were, not cold or clammy the way Katara’s hands were sometimes after she’d been waterbending (or Toph’s hands, which got cold at night, and she’d warm them up on Aang’s bare head because she was Toph). “Is this okay?” Zuko asked quietly.

Aang nodded; he wasn’t sure what would come out of his mouth if he tried to speak, and how embarrassing would it be if his sixteen-year-old voice cracked when his unfairly attractive, nearly twenty-year-old friend was about to… kiss him. Firmly and confidently, his mouth open but his tongue barely grazing over Aang’s bottom lip. His mouth tasted sweet from the wine he’d been drinking; it was no wonder Katara liked it, because it didn’t have the unpleasant burn he associated with the smell of alcohol, that he recalled tasting on Zuko’s tongue when he had been drinking brandy. But he didn’t mind it on Zuko’s tongue, because it was part of what _he_ tasted like, along with the heat and smoke and spice of the fire that breathed through him. Something deep in Aang’s belly flared up in response, but he didn’t think it was the bender’s inner fire (which was good, because he didn’t think the innkeeper would appreciate it if he singed their carpets).

Zuko pulled away; Aang opened his eyes slowly, feeling dazed and somewhat lightheaded. Zuko held eye contact with him, and Aang gave another nod to indicate that all was well.

Only then did Zuko look over at Katara for her reaction. Aang turned to follow his gaze. The color was high in Katara’s cheeks, but Aang didn’t think she looked angry.

“Are you all right?” Zuko asked her directly.

“Yes, definitely,” she said, sounding a little breathless. Was she… _turned on?_ Aang wasn’t sure how he felt about that. Zuko’s raised eyebrow and quirked lips suggested he did know how he felt, and it was amused.

“Good,” said Zuko, and stepped over to Katara’s side of the couch. She stood up without being prompted, glancing over at Aang as she did so. He gave her a little nod, and she reached for Zuko’s face before he reached for her, swiping her thumb gently over his scarred cheek. She was probably thinking of their conversation in the Crystal Catacombs, of her offer to heal his face. Of course she was glad she’d still had the spirit water when Aang needed it… but was she sorry she hadn’t healed him, all the same? (She could always go to the North Pole for more, if she really wanted to, Aang reflected.) Or was she glad, as Aang was, that she hadn’t?

Aang watched their lips come together, and he couldn’t help thinking of the Ember Island Players, of stage-Zuko kissing stage-Katara, and stage-Katara saying she thought of Aang as nothing more than a silly little brother. Of course those fears had been thoroughly assuaged in the past three and a half years… but seeing this, he found himself thrown back there—on the cusp of thirteen, wondering why a confident, talented, beautiful young woman wouldn’t want a strong, competent, equally beautiful young man instead of a doubt-filled frivolous child.

Zuko and Katara had parted and were looking at him before he had fully returned to the present. “Are _you_ all right?” Zuko asked, sounding genuinely concerned.

“Yeah, I’m fine.” The other two looked skeptical, so Aang admitted: “Sorry, I was just thinking of that stupid play we saw on Ember Island.”

Zuko made a growling noise in his throat. “I still can’t believe they put my fucking scar _on the wrong side._ Dumb shit actor probably doesn’t know how mirrors work…”

“You think _that_ was bad?” Katara scoffed. “They had me constantly bursting into tears for no reason! I probably cry less often than either of you!”

Aang and Zuko looked at each other and Zuko shrugged one shoulder as if to say _That’s fair._

“But… are you going to be thinking about that play every time Zuko and I are together and you’re not there?” Katara asked gently.

Aang had to consider his answer. He wanted to be able to say _“No.”_ He also wanted to grab Katara right now and kiss her to reassert his claim (which was completely unnecessary because Zuko had seen them kiss plenty of times). Or maybe kiss Zuko again, for the same purpose. Which was selfish and unfair—wanting to have both of them for himself without sharing them with each other. And he was the Air Nomad, who shouldn’t have believed in ownership of any kind, much less of other people’s feelings. He shouldn’t be the one who had a problem with jealousy!

Aang sighed. “Maybe at first. But I’ll try not to.”

“Is that like trying not to think of an elephant-rhino?” Zuko said dryly.

“What?” Aang glanced over at Katara, who also looked blank.

“It’s an expression: ‘Don’t think of an elephant-rhino.’ It’s supposed to illustrate the futility of telling someone not to think about something. Because as soon as you say it, they’re thinking of an elephant-rhino.” Zuko explained all this as awkwardly as he ever explained anything, which is to say, very.

“Huh,” said Aang, because it was perfectly true.

“The point is… if you’re _trying_ not to think about the Ember Island play, you’re already thinking about it,” Zuko said.

“Right,” said Aang.

“So… think about what bullshit it was,” Katara suggested. Aang was taken aback to hear that word come out of her mouth, and Zuko looked faintly impressed. “If we were really anything like we were in that play, why would you even want either of us?”

Aang smiled weakly. _It wasn’t_ that _far off about any of us,_ he definitely wasn’t going to say. And for all Zuko’s yelling about honor and Katara’s sermons about hope, he loved them both. _Maybe she can still love me despite being silly and naïve and unsure of anything. Maybe they both can._

“Try it again,” he said, waving a hand at them. “Kiss.”

Katara raised her eyebrows at Zuko and he shrugged in return. He cupped a hand over her cheek and bent to kiss her. This time, Aang watched _them_ , not the image of the actors in his mind. It _was_ kind of hot, he had to admit (to Katara’s credit, or in her defense), watching two people he found beautiful enjoying themselves. Not that he’d want to make a habit of it…

Zuko broke the kiss, straightened up, and looked back over at Aang. “Are you all right now?”

“Yeah, I think I am,” he said, and meant it. On a strange impulse, he threw his arms around both of them.

“Uh… are you _sure_ you’re all right?” Zuko asked dubiously, reaching up to give Aang a few awkward pats on the back.

Aang laughed, but didn’t let go. “I’m so glad I have both of you. I’m glad we all have each other.”

Katara brought her arms up to return the hug, and squeezed playfully, making Aang say _“Oof!”_ “So am I,” she said.

Zuko had stopped awkwardly patting and just held. “I’m glad I had Katara, or you wouldn’t have me,” he remarked.

“The reverse is also true,” she added.

“I think if we tried counting all the times one of us had saved another, we’d be here for a very long time,” Aang pointed out.

“Are we also counting _failed to kill?”_ Katara asked slyly.

“Hey! I wasn’t—”

“Joke, Zuko. I’m over it.”

“—if anything, _you_ failed to kill _me_ —”

“So I guess you’re not over it.”

“Hmph. Can we stop hugging now?”

“Okay, _fine_ ,” said Aang, feigning grudgingness. “You great boarcupine.”

“I’m not a—”

“Excuse me, cuddly koala-otter.”

“I’m not that either!”

“What are you, then?” Katara asked teasingly. “And if you say ‘dragon,’ I’m going to Toph-punch you.”

 _“Lèse-majesté!”_ Zuko protested, turning aside and shielding the shoulder closer to her with his hand.

“He’s a tigerdillo,” Aang announced.

“Hard protective shell on the outside, but when you get closer… a mouth full of sharp teeth?”

“Its roar is considerably worse than its bite.”

“Ah, yes, I can see that now.” Katara gave a satisfied nod.

“Oh, I give up.” Zuko yawned, as jaw-crackingly as any tigerdillo. “Agni, I just realized how tired I am.”

“It has been a very long day,” said Katara. “And yours started with an airship flight. Those are strangely exhausting, even if you’re just sitting there.”

“Bison flight is much better,” Aang put in.

“…says you,” Zuko retorted. He wasn’t quite as uncomfortable in Appa’s saddle as Toph was, but he never looked thrilled.

“We should all go to bed,” said Katara, reverting to group-mother mode. Aang didn’t mind it.

“I was going to say _thanks for coming in to chat_ , but now I know you had ulterior motives…” said Zuko, walking toward the door to show them out.

Katara started to follow him, but Aang didn’t. “I thought we might stay,” he said.

Katara frowned. “Again, I didn’t envision…”

“No, not that,” Aang said hurriedly. “I meant to sleep.” He looked over at Zuko, who was shifting uncomfortably on his feet, the look in his eyes uncertain but perhaps hopeful. “Zuko has trouble sleeping alone.”

“And you know this because…?”

Aang met Katara’s eyes, apologetic but not ashamed. “Because he asked me to come to bed with him after we kissed. Just to sleep! And I did, and I think it helped.”

Katara folded her arms, while Zuko looked _very_ uncomfortable behind her. “And why didn’t you tell me _that_ this morning?”

Aang rubbed the back of his neck. “It just seemed like… a lot? And I thought the kiss was the important thing…”

“This isn’t _not_ important.”

“Yeah, but… it could just be a friend thing. I mean, something a friend would do.”

“Being preceded by a kiss kind of puts it in a different light…”

Aang ran his hand over the top of his head to cover his eyes. “Yeah, I know.”

Katara sighed. “Obviously I can’t really hold it against you now, but could you _please_ promise not to be… selectively honest about things in the future?”

“Yes. I promise,” Aang said seriously.

Zuko had already shed his robes and flung them over the back of a chair. (Aang reflected that he didn’t really need to worry about wrinkles: his hands could function as portable irons.)

“You know,” he remarked to Katara in an apologetic tone, “this might not end up being a… an equilateral triangle, so to speak. Or an isosceles, rather—since the shortest edge is still between the two of you. What I mean is… Aang and I are likely to be brought together by our duties more often than you and I are—like this last time, when I needed the Avatar’s help in the Capital, but your responsibilities were here.”

“An I-saw-se- _what_ now?”

“Oh, uh. They’re types of triangles. Equilateral means all three sides are the same length; isosceles means two sides are the same.” There was no sand or dirt to draw an illustration in, so Aang traced the shapes with his finger on the back of Katara’s hand: first a triangle with three equal sides, then a tall skinny one with a short base and symmetric legs.

Katara was looking self-conscious again, and consequently annoyed. “Well, sorry if not all of us learned mathematics from _royal tutors_ or… or wise old monks.”

Zuko smacked his forehead. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you feel…”

“Ignorant? Uneducated?”

“…bad. Ugh, I’m still bad at people.”

“You’re definitely improving, though!” Aang said cheerfully.

“…thanks? Wine helps. Usually.”

And that was another conversation they needed to have at some point… but not now.

Zuko pulled the crown pin out of his hair and unwrapped the leather thong that bound it into its topknot. He finger-combed it out: it had grown long enough to brush his shoulders now.

“Ooh, can I touch your hair?” Katara asked brightly, all offense apparently forgotten.

“Uh… sure?”

“Aang, feel how silky it is!”

He already knew, of course, but he ran his fingers through Zuko’s hair to humor her. The strands were straighter, finer, and darker than either Katara’s or Aang’s, on the rare occasions when he let it grow out.

It turned out she hadn’t quite forgotten to be offended, because she told Zuko, “All is forgiven if you’ll let me do your hair sometime.”

“Um. Okay.”

“Careful,” said Aang. “She’ll put it into the little loopies for a formal occasion.”

Zuko exhaled a laugh through his nose. “I’d love to see the court’s reaction to that, actually.” He extricated his hair from Katara’s fingers and climbed into bed.

Aang had to divest himself of more layers than he usually did to sleep, but he left on the long-sleeved tunic and leggings—the polar nights were chilly, even for someone who had grown up in the mountains. Then he tucked himself against Zuko’s back, as he had before, and pulled him close with an arm over his side. Zuko gave the hand pressed against his chest a grateful squeeze.

Katara, who had evidently been waiting to see how they arranged themselves, got in behind Aang with an amused “So, His Highness the Fire Lord is a little spoon?”

“Why do you people find this funny?” Zuko groused.

“Growly little tigerdillo kitten…”

“Oh, um. Fair warning,” Aang said, remembering suddenly. “When we see Toph and Sokka tomorrow, expect merciless teasing and unsubtle innuendo. They were eavesdropping when I talked to Katara this morning.”

Zuko’s muscles stiffened, and Aang thought the temperature immediately around them rose a couple of degrees. “They _what?!”_ Ah, there was the reaction he might have expected from the old Zuko; he hadn’t been entirely submerged in depressants and decorum.

“They were going to find out anyway,” Katara pointed out. “And they were never going to be mature about it.”

After a pause to consider this point, Zuko sighed “…true” and gradually relaxed again.

It didn’t take long before his breathing settled into the slow, even cadence of sleep. Clearly he needed it: he was probably still making up for weeks of sleeplessness. Katara soon joined him; no doubt she was still exhausted from a restless night spent worrying about her father.

It occurred to Aang that, as an Air Nomad, he should not feel nearly this safe and comfortable wedged in between two people who were, quite literally, pinning him down to the material world. He had never been good at giving up attachments; apparently he was intent on acquiring ever more of them.

Did it make him a flawed Avatar? Like a stray snippet of a dream he’d thought long faded, he recalled someone telling him that the Avatar Spirit needed to be bound to a human body—to a human heart—to truly understand why the world was worth saving. Cocooned between the fire-scarred ruler of the Fire Nation and the last waterbender of the Southern Water Tribe, Aang thought he understood better than anyone.

**Author's Note:**

> Sorry the conversation got so long. When I think of a new thing for characters to talk about, I'm bad at telling myself no.
> 
> They're drinking nigori sake, obviously. It's sweeter and more approachable than the traditional filtered kind.
> 
> I don't know why I've decided that French expressions come from the Fire Nation. Norman Conquest something something.


End file.
